26419 research outputs found
Sort by
Decoding Tattoo and Permanent Makeup Pigments: Linking Physicochemical Properties to Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, and Elimination Profiles Using Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR)-Based New Approach Methodologies (NAMs)
No full textThe safety and quality of tattoo and permanent makeup (PMU) pigments are subject to increased scrutiny due to their potential to cause adverse effects like anaphylaxis, photoallergic responses, and long-term toxicity. These undesirable reactions governed by their chemical structure possess varied physicochemical properties and absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination (ADME) characteristics. These properties control the pigment behavior during application, stability, and interaction with human tissue. The correlation between these physicochemical characteristics and ADME parameters of tattoo/PMU pigments remain under-explored despite the current advances in toxicology. Our study aims to address and bridge the gap by leveraging open-access QSAR computational toxicology tools like SwissADME and ChemBCPP to assess the ADME profiles of 90 synthetic tattoo/PMU pigments. We recruited techniques such as principal component analysis, correlation analysis, and hierarchical clustering. Furthermore, the intricate relationships between physicochemical properties, such as boiling point, density, solubility, and vapor pressure, and ADME behaviors spanning skin and gastrointestinal absorption, octanol coefficient, and more was explored. Our findings reveal significant systemic links associated with pigment properties and offer a data-driven pipeline for safer pigment selection. The complex relationship between ADME and physicochemical properties was visualized by computing a correlation matrix. This revealed a strong positive correlation between properties such as lipophilicity and skin penetration for pigment epidermal absorption, viscosity, and flashpoint, essential for pigment stability, while negative correlations between vapor pressure and viscosity highlighted potential risks associated with pigment volatility. This approach strengthens the applications of new approach methodologies in the tattoo and PMU pigment functional insight, by developing in silico analytical pipelines and manufacturing safer, high-quality ink development
A Politics of Place: Reading the Signs at Walden Pond
No full textPilgrimage begins with a vision of place. Look down! The holy is here beneath your feet. The boundary of heaven and earth is not the distant horizon, ever out of reach. It shimmers on the surface of the water. As Thoreau ponders the sky reflected in Walden Pond, he sees the earth encompassed within the spiritual realm. The concept of ‘sacred geography’ also suggests such an embrace. Through the recognition of a pattern in the landscape or the orientation of a temple in the holy city, sacred geography claims that the landscape is a map of the divine order, the shape of the city is a key to the structure of the cosmos. These ascriptions of meaning may be as public and contentious as the land claims of competing religions, or as particular and personal as the anchoring of ideals in iconic places. Sacred geography asserts that our beliefs are revealed in the landscape, and suggests that our experience of place can transform the perception of the sacred
Democracy and Foreign Aid: How Democratic Institutions Affect Aid Effectiveness
No full textThis research paper examines the comparative effectiveness of foreign aid in Ghana and Zimbabwe, highlighting the critical role of political regimes and democratic institutions. The study underscores that while democratic governance, characterized by transparency, accountability, and citizen participation, significantly enhances aid effectiveness. Ghana’s stable democracy and robust institutions have facilitated the effective use of aid, leading to significant improvements in economic growth, education, healthcare, and infrastructure. In contrast, Zimbabwe’s authoritarian regime, marked by corruption and political repression, has hindered the efficient utilization of aid, exacerbating the country\u27s socio-economic challenges. Policy recommendations for donors emphasize the need for promoting democratic governance, enhancing aid coordination, improving transparency and accountability, channeling aid through NGOs, and adapting to context-specific challenges. The findings suggest that considering political factors and regime type of governance, is essential for foreign aid disbursement or allocation to enhance the impact
Insights in Adaptation: Examining Self-Reflection Strategies of Job Seekers with Visual Impairments in India
No full textSignificant changes in the digital employment landscape, driven by rapid technological advancements and the COVID-19 pandemic, have introduced new opportunities for blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals in developing countries like India. However, a significant portion of the BVI population in India remains unemployed despite extensive accessibility advancements and job search interventions. Therefore, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 BVI persons who were either pursuing or recently sought employment in the digital industry. Our findings reveal that despite gaining digital literacy and extensive training, BVI individuals struggle to meet industry requirements for fulfilling job openings. While they engage in self-reflection to identify shortcomings in their approach and skills, they lack constructive feedback from peers and recruiters. Moreover, the numerous job intervention tools are limited in their ability to meet the unique needs of BVI job seekers. Our results, therefore, provide key insights that inform the design of future collaborative intervention systems that offer personalized feedback for BVI individuals, effectively guiding their self-reflection process and subsequent job search behaviors, and potentially leading to improved employment outcomes
A Survey on Deep Learning for Drug-Target Binding Prediction: Models, Benchmarks, Evaluation, and Case Studies
No full textConventional drug discovery is expensive, time-consuming, and prone to failure. Artificial intelligence has become a potent substitute over the last decade, providing strong answers to challenging biological issues in this field. Among these difficulties, drug-target binding (DTB) is a key component of drug discovery techniques. In this context, drug-target affinity and drug–target interaction are complementary and essential frameworks that work together to improve our comprehension of DTB dynamics. In this work, we thoroughly analyze the most recent deep learning models, popular benchmark datasets, and assessment metrics for DTB prediction. We look at the paradigm shift in the development of drug discovery research since researchers started using deep learning as a potent tool for DTB prediction. In particular, we examine how methodologies have evolved, starting with early heterogeneous network-based approaches, progressing to graph-based approaches that were widely accepted, followed by modern attention-based architectures, and finally, the most recent multimodal approaches. We also provide case studies utilizing an extensive compound library against specific protein targets implicated in critical cancer pathways to demonstrate the usefulness of these approaches. In addition to summarizing the latest developments in DTB prediction models, this review also identifies their drawbacks. It also highlights the outlook for the DTB prediction domain and future research directions. Combined, these studies present a more comprehensive view of how deep learning offers a quantitative framework for researching drug-target relationships, speeding up the identification of new drug candidates and making it easier to identify possible DTBs
Is the Defendant Mad or Bad? The Association Between Mental Health, Race and Sex in Sentencing in Federal Courts
No full textAlthough US courts regularly sentence individuals with mental health problems, to date, there has been little research on whether mental health indicators are related to sentencing decisions. The focal concerns perspective suggests that sentencing decisions reflect perceptions of the blameworthiness of the defendant, concerns about protecting the community, and practical considerations. Potentially, mental health issues could serve as a mitigating factor in sentencing decisions by making defendants seem less culpable for their actions and more deserving of assistance rather than punishment, and/or due to concerns about practical considerations related to higher costs of incarceration or of exacerbating current mental health conditions. However, mental health could also serve as an aggravating factor, making defendants appear less in control of their actions, and thus more likely to recidivate. Using the lens of intersectionality, it is likely that whether mental health issues mitigate or aggravate sentences will vary by the race and sex of the individual. We use weighted negative binomial regression modeling to measure whether mental health indicators predict sentence length in US federal courts, and whether these outcomes vary based on the race and/or sex of the defendant across different crime types. Results indicate support that mental illness is related to sentencing and this relationship does vary by race, and the combination of both race and sex. However, the form of this relationship varies by offense type, suggesting that mental health, race and sex could be perceived differently by sentencing actors based on the offense
An Analytical Model of Motion Artifacts in a Measured Arterial Pulse Signal—Part II: Tactile Sensors
No full textThis paper, the second of two parts, presents an analytical model of motion artifacts (MA) in measured pulse signals by a tactile sensor, which contains a deformable microstructure sitting on a substrate. While the tissue-contact-sensor (TCS) stack and the sensor are both treated as a 1DOF (degree-of-freedom) system, tissue–sensor contact joins their mass together to form a 1DOF system with springs and dampers on both sides. MA on the sensor substrate causes baseline drift and time-varying system parameters (TVSP) of the TCS stack simultaneously. An analytical model is developed to mathematically relate baseline drift and TVSP to a measured pulse signal. The numerical calculation is conducted in MATLAB. Baseline drift in a measured pulse signal is much lower than the actual MA in its measurement. As compared to baseline drift, TVSP generates relatively abrupt, small distortion (e.g., 0.2% variation in heart rate and \u3c 5% change in pulse amplitude), but it rides on each harmonic of the true pulse signal. Sensor design alters both the deviation of the amplitude and waveform of a measured pulse signal from the true pulse signal and the influence of MA on it
Small-x Gluon GPD Constrained from Deeply Virtual J/ψ Production and Gluon PDF Through Universal-Moment Parametrization
No full textWe phenomenologically constrain the small-x and small- gluon generalized parton distributions (GPDs) with the deeply virtual J/ψ production (DVJ/ψP) in the framework of GPDs through universal moment parameterization (GUMP). We use a hybrid cross-section formula combining collinear factorization to the next-to-leading order (NLO) accuracy of the strong coupling s, with corrections from nonrelativistic QCD to account for the power corrections due to the heavy J/ψ mass. We reach reasonable fit to the measured differential cross sections of DVJ/ψP by H1 at the Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator as well as forward gluon parton distribution functions (PDFs) from JAM22 global analysis. We find that both NLO and nonrelativistic corrections are significant for heavy vector meson productions. Of course, the gluon GPD we obtain still contains considerable freedom in need of inputs from other constraints, particularly in the distribution-amplitude-like region
Performance Auditing Trends at a Supreme Audit Institution: UK National Audit Office, 1999 to 2021
No full textPerformance audits have become increasingly important across the world. Scholars know that a variety of practices are incorporated within performance audits and have mapped this diversity. However, few quantitative studies examine performance auditing as a practice. This study fills that gap. By analyzing the published performance audit documentation of the UK National Audit Office (NAO), the study explores the influences of governmental change and crises behind changes in a supreme audit institution\u27s performance audit. It also examines whether performance audits are diverse by examining the language used by the auditors. The study provides evidence that neither crises nor changes of government have a significant effect on the overall extent of performance audit reporting. However, over time, the study does find variation in the themes of performance audit reports, with more financial themes and fewer performance themes after 2010
Prevalence of Sexuality Implicit Bias in Entry-Level Dental Hygiene Students
No full textPurpose Bias and discrimination may create barriers and affect the delivery of culturally competent care to sexual minorities. An awareness of biases early in education may promote more equitable oral health care delivery to diverse populations. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of sexuality-implicit attitudes in entry-level dental hygiene students at one university.
Methods This cross-sectional survey study included a convenience sample of dental hygiene students from one university (n=74). The Implicit Associations Test (IAT), a validated tool for measuring implicit bias, was modified for use in dentistry with permission from Project Implicit(®) The IAT requires participants to rapidly pair two social groups, in this case, homosexual and heterosexual individuals, with either positive or negative attributes (words/concepts), using the E and I computer keyboard keys. Faster average response times to pairings indicates a preference for a group. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate the means between groups and determine the prevalence of sexuality implicit biases. Independent samples t-test was utilized to examine differences in the level of implicit bias based on the year in the dental hygiene program (p\u3c 0.05). One-way between-subjects ANOVA was used to examine differences in age groups (p\u3c 0.05).
Results Seventy dental hygiene students (n=70) completed the survey, (n=34 first year, n=36 second year). The average overall implicit score for first-year students was 0.001 (no sexuality preference), and 0.069 for second-year students (no sexuality preference). No statistically significant differences were found when comparing year in dental hygiene program and age groups.
Conclusion Undergraduate dental hygiene students had no sexuality bias for straight or gay individuals